...and why the fuck are all these fucking kids suddenly posting mp4 movies that were made in flash? Movies that get no benefit whatsoever from being in a video format.

I don't get it. Why are all these people putting in the extra effort for their video format?
I get it if they edited it in after effects or whatever, but most shit is stuff like this, which is just plain flash saved as video format.
I also get that lots of kids have their youtube channels now and they are converting their SWFs into MP4s anyway, but it's like they think that their swf files magically disappear. Like they can't use it anymore.

Then theres this twat that doesn't even know how to export his audio properly in swf. If you go through the reviews you'll see him responding to some guy about how he doesn't know how to change his audio quality.

The thing is. When the movie is over, I would like to check out these peoples stuff. Well...Some of them.
And what they do is, they upload a video file (for god knows what reason) and then put the link to their stuff in the comment section, which Newgrounds then in turn fucks up by putting spaces in the URL.
It would be way easier if they just put links to their stuff IN THEIR SWF.

And it's not like they HAVE to for mobiles. I mean, they can upload BOTH. But something tells me that people who can't even export an SWF properly, don't give a rats ass about being "mobile compatible".

I'm sorry that I'm ranting about this, but I want to know what the fuck happened because I like SWFs. I get to zoom in and click shit.
Also, I hate the youtube generation. So there's that.

.swf can be very limiting in some respects and when you're creating a 5min cartoon with lots of assets and stuff going on and try to keep it in one continuous file, it's going to be a burden to export.

Also, the .swf format is weakened by the fact that people can decompile your animation and poke around and steal whatever they like from it.

At 2/27/13 06:40 PM, GiantPugStudios wrote:
.swf can be very limiting in some respects and when you're creating a 5min cartoon with lots of assets and stuff going on and try to keep it in one continuous file, it's going to be a burden to export.

Yeah of course, I get that sometimes an SWF isn't enough for what you want, but the example I gave didn't need the video format in any way, and theres tons of those in the portal.
30 second animations that use the video format and I have no idea why theyre doing it.

Listen, I'm not saying I hate the video player or whatever. It's just, that I don't see any reason why they're using it when there's a perfectly fine swf out there.

Also, the .swf format is weakened by the fact that people can decompile your animation and poke around and steal whatever they like from it.

This is pretty limited though, and I would kind of feel honored if someone would use my artwork for their own. Seriously, that means I'm doing something right you know?
Also, if people are going to steal something, they're going to steal it. Swf or not. People reupload youtube videos all the time. It's not like it being in a video format changes anything....

At 2/27/13 10:15 AM, Max-Vador wrote:
tl;dr

too much for a approval basis, not enough server to allow everything. we are in a pickle. but you can't tell them "post whatever you want in any format!...except for you, you, you and you"

I think you're completely wrong on so many levels Damien. Sorry, but you are. SWF is extremely awful, and no matter on what level you feel passionate about it, it has to eventually be pushed aside (not taken away), for better formats when it comes to animated films.

At 2/27/13 05:03 AM, Damien wrote:
...and why the fuck are all these fucking kids suddenly posting mp4 movies that were made in flash? Movies that get no benefit whatsoever from being in a video format.

Instantly you don't recognize the benefits of raster format over a vector format. Some which have been mentioned. Things like, if people are going to steal your movie, they will steal it. But with SWFs you can decompress it, without the password, take the elements and use them in your project. We're not talking about whole movie stealing which is theft, but when someone steals elements, it can be hard for someone to notice it. Saying that, this is actually only a small single factor to why MP4s, or any raster/bitmap format is a better than swfs.

I don't get it. Why are all these people putting in the extra effort for their video format?
I get it if they edited it in after effects or whatever, but most shit is stuff like this, which is just plain flash saved as video format.

Instantly you haven't really looked at that movie have you? We see things like massive glows, and blurs which are tweened. SWF animations struggles on number of levels when tweening this information. For someone with a lesser computer too, it depends on their CPU to quickly decode and run that in real time. Single frames are far more efficient and bit rates stay somewhat more constant.

Then thereâEUTMs this twat that doesn't even know how to export his audio properly in swf. If you go through the reviews you'll see him responding to some guy about how he doesn't know how to change his audio quality.

Nothing to do with MP4, invalid rant? :/

The thing is. When the movie is over, I would like to check out these peoples stuff. Well...Some of them.
And what they do is, they upload a video file (for god knows what reason) and then put the link to their stuff in the comment section, which Newgrounds then in turn fucks up by putting spaces in the URL.
It would be way easier if they just put links to their stuff IN THEIR SWF.

But what you still are desperate for is interactivity. A good animation isn't dependent on this. Your argument here is void because you're complaining here about newgrounds linking more than anything else. Is it really so hard top copy and paste a link, then delete a space? Or quickly type in a URL. It's not that hard.

And it's not like they HAVE to for mobiles. I mean, they can upload BOTH. But something tells me that people who can't even export an SWF properly, don't give a rats ass about being "mobile compatible".

Once again, your poor assumption that the SWF player is better than a bitmap player, itâEUTMs not, and IâEUTMll tell you why below.

I'm sorry that I'm ranting about this, but I want to know what the fuck happened because I like SWFs. I get to zoom in and click shit.
Also, I hate the YouTube generation. So there's that.

You can rant, but with this rant be prepared to take the opposite gruff from me as IâEUTMm going to tell you why the SWF player is a pile of crap for animation. Zooming in and pausing and going through Frame by frame is for user scrutiny. As a creator, this isn't a priority, it's nice to look at things via frame by frame, but it's not a necessity. Not at all for any movie creator to give your user this ability. If you want to watch it frame by frame that bad, download the MP4, and open it in QuickTime. "Clicking shit", implies interactivity, which is obviously nothing to do with a film. You don't click your remote when you watch a movie or click buttons when going to the cinema. Animation is no different. The quicker you realize there is a divide between animation and interactive web content the better.

Now, here's why you're wrong.

Flash and the swf player are not designed for animation. It's designed for interactive web content. That's its primal focus, and only focus. It's one of the main reasons why Flash doesn't work like every other high end 2D animation program (IâEUTMm not going into the differences). It just happens that people used it to create animations because it became widely spread and it's easy for people to use. I've been a Flash user for over 12 years and have also used other animation programs, and flash is not the best program out there. So keep that in mind, when saying 'why are animations no longer in SWF format'. That's because full movie SWF animations were never a priority to Macromedia, nor a priority to Adobe. I say full movie, because interactive web content is different, it's real time. Instantaneous. So hopefully you understand the difference.

So why does SWF suck? Let me explain to a very dependent you and "Flash" community. Flash player, as you know is a vector player. But for the likes of any animation vector isn't always the best solution. Animation may be created in vector but instantly you have restricted yourself to a system which is dependable on the vector format, because of the swf player. As an animator, why should you do that? Why should I only be able to colour in flash? Why should all my backgrounds be in flash or illustrator? And if decidedly working only in flash, why do I have to cap detail so it streams proficiently? It seems already that as an artist/animator that Ive told myself - no amazing detail, no painting, no traditional animation whatsoever. Already I've hindered myself and my creation. When looking at it that way this is the reason why I hate the swf player, and have waited patiently for newgrounds to subside it for animators, not just "flash animators". Whats the point in having a community, and then dictating to them we only accept you if you are a flash animator. And yet, not just a flash animator, a restricted one, with filesize and timeline restrictions. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds!?

More importantly, instantly you neglect more than half of other animators out there. The Traditional Animators, the experimental animators, the stop motion animators, the 3D animators, the the pixelation animators, the mixed media animators and many more. All these things, flash player just wont allow. Previously everyone of these mediums had to convert viciously to the swf format, and watch the quality get crushed to make the filesize requirement. You complain about not being able to click a link, think about all the additional attractive content you can now get. See the bigger picture. Newgrounds finally have - they've opened this community for more than just flash animators to take part. You may hate youtube, but youtube is not as defined in categories and ratings as newgrounds is. Which is why it will work here, well. Newgrounds is now going to grow, crazily grow. You think it's big now? Wait 5 years and see how it's full of a variety of animation content. And so it should be.

SWF player lacks the stability and robustness of a bitmap player for film and animation. That's fact. Vector graphics is calculated in real time in the player, which is why too much information kills the player, and stability. It stutters and jitters. And easily too. You add some simple blur effects to a scrolling detailed background of 5 layers, and watch it die on you, even on a high end PC. Want to watch a movie? Sure..sure. Just wait for it to load. Internet has sped up, and no streaming is far more accessible. Why wait for an animation to load when you can play it instantly and load it while the user watches.

Let's go down another route shall we? What's the highest possible commercial user screen size? 1920 x 1080p. That's alot of pixels, do you think flash could handle running vector? Of course not. Can mp4? Absolutely. So now you can full screen a massive movie, watching all the fine details we can now add without frame drop or streaming issues. Alternatively there's mobile, a market which has increased massively. SWF certainly isnt popular in that category, for obvious reasons. Mp4 also welcomes a timeline, so now we can jump to parts of the movie, if we ever want to go back and see a specific part of an animation. Something which takes user coding to do in SWF.

If i stick to flash creation, then you should also consider not just After Effects but Premier. Animation professionally is edited, shot by shot meticulously . Being made in flash is irrelevant because in premier you allow yourself to pull away from the animation and consider a different filmmakers palette. Whether it be consistency in shot, cinematography, staging or anything like that Premier allows you to be work quicker and more efficiently. Stick to flash though, and youâEUTMre left with chopping and cutting with going from scene to scene cutting frames extending them while selecting multiple layers, and possibly having to make more work for yourself by adding more keyframes here there and everywhere while you adjust the timing. Not to even mention the sound element of editing like that alone in flash.

And since I spoke about sound, how about we dive into that for a second. FlashâEUTMs sound, is a complete and utter joke. You really have a choice of RAW or speech for good sounding quality, which will up your loading times for the user, or you have a choice of mp3. Yay...right? Wrong. Their mp3 encoder is appalling. Ever since early flash days they have only supported up to 160kbps. 160!!! What is this? The millennium? And not only that by default they still have it converting from stereo to mono. This absolutely sums up the flash playerâEUTMs lack of capability. The fact they havenâEUTMt added 192Kbps, 256Kbps or even 320kbps is proof that the player is dated when it comes to audio. Streaming and Event sounds go off sync too in the player if you use a lot of scenes - something you would never experience if you edit in the likes of premier and export to video file with a high quality audio. With the ability of editing sounds at a âEUoepostâEU stage, where you would import sounds to flash only to help sync with timing (dialogue etc) then you concentrate more on an area which is regularly missed by flash animators. Concentration in those areas become very much more valuable the more you do it, as sound afterall is half the movie.

With a lot of these base points made, hopefully you can be a bit more opening minded and realise the true potential of having MP4 on this website. Even if you think users arenâEUTMt using it right now enough to merit the maximum usage, they will get better. And when they do they have the ability and opportunity to utilize the raster format to a full potential, showcasing animations without paranoia that the information created is too great to be showcased at the desired frame rates and scale.

I apologize if you find my post a bit offensive, but I've waited for NG's to get raster movie format submission for years, and then people complain about it, not really realizing how it enhances the community and experience here.

At 2/28/13 10:07 AM, PeterSatera wrote:
I think you're completely wrong on so many levels Damien. Sorry, but you are. SWF is extremely awful, and no matter on what level you feel passionate about it, it has to eventually be pushed aside (not taken away), for better formats when it comes to animated films....
I apologize if you find my post a bit offensive, but I've waited for NG's to get raster movie format submission for years, and then people complain about it, not really realizing how it enhances the community and experience here.

I have either explained myself wrongly, or you took it the wrong way. I'm in no way saying that SWF is a superior format. Sure I'm a bit of a fanboy for interactivity, seeing that that is why I am on the web. I enjoy interacting with my information. So I'm a bit biased towards that.
But you seem to think that I am attacking the MP4 format.
I'm not. I'm complaining about the people who use it. Or better yet, not used the SWF portal.

The exampled that I used, shows that there are people who have no knowledge of flash and are too incompetent to pick up a different (and probably cheaper) software to enjoy the art of animation. Which is why I referred to it as the "youtube generation".
It's like every dumbass with a phone/camera can post videos on youtube, has now infected newgrounds; Every person with access to flash is posting videos. And they're so used to the youtube video format that they never even considered using an swf in the first place, let alone upload it to newgrounds. People that have been doing things in flash only NOW started uploading to newgrounds, NOW that there is a video portal. Which baffles me. There was nothing stopping them from uploading their shitty SWF here in the first place.

Anyway, listen. You obviously love animation a lot and all the different mediums for it, and I truly admire and respect that.
The thing is though, I used to dabble in photography and I've seen digital photography and hipsters RUIN that art, and I'm seeing the same happening here now thanks to "the youtube generation". So pleaseunderstand my point of view.

But I digress. I'm not complaining about the video portal. I absolutely love it. The new feature Mike has just launched, which promotes related videos, just proves how great its already doing. But it's the user base that comes flocking with it that frustrates me. People that want nothing but more youtube subscribers and have absolutely no respect for the art.

And by all means, use whatever software you want. I insist! Variation is the spice of life. But if you're going to make a very SIMPLE animation in FLASH, why even bother converting to MP4? From what I can tell, it is because they want to look like the big boys. They want to look like their egoraptors and oneys. And that bothers me. The little kids. Tom used have hope for the 13 year olds on this site, because they inspired hope and they had potential. But I feel that times have changed. People are getting dumber and phones are getting smarter.

....

I also just noticed one of your arguments. The file size one. SWF files are by nature smaller and more compact, usually not going over 10 megabytes, unless you're going really all out.
A 5 minute animation in videoformat can easily go up into the hundreds of megabytes. So that argument is pretty invalid. People are making their swf files bigger by converting them to a movie format on purpose! Which is totally bananas!
When kids are animating in flash, they should use things like Swivel or the video portal when they HAVE to, not for every little tween they made.

Just saying dude, it's never really about what canvas you use, but about the story that's on the canvas.

I know I'm going to deep into this, but I feel that such a big post like yours should be countered with something equal ;)

I love your spirit dude. You really seemed to know your game. Don't be too idealistic though, this website has a history with flash, and the youtube kids need to know about that. CUZ I SAY SO OKAY

At 2/28/13 05:26 PM, Damien wrote:
I also just noticed one of your arguments. The file size one. SWF files are by nature smaller and more compact, usually not going over 10 megabytes, unless you're going really all out.
A 5 minute animation in videoformat can easily go up into the hundreds of megabytes. So that argument is pretty invalid. People are making their swf files bigger by converting them to a movie format on purpose! Which is totally bananas!
When kids are animating in flash, they should use things like Swivel or the video portal when they HAVE to, not for every little tween they made.

Just saying dude, it's never really about what canvas you use, but about the story that's on the canvas.

I know I'm going to deep into this, but I feel that such a big post like yours should be countered with something equal ;)

I love your spirit dude. You really seemed to know your game. Don't be too idealistic though, this website has a history with flash, and the youtube kids need to know about that. CUZ I SAY SO OKAY

That's true, a 5minute animation can be hundreds. If uncompressed it will be gigs, and the larger dimensions the heavier it is, but only if the user can't compress appropriately. With simple converters today they are fairly idiot proof, giving you the option to choose mp4, and decide on whether you want it high, medium or low quality. I agree that maybe I am possibly too idealistic in pushing the boundaries, even to the point of obsession. But what's the point in not learning about these things, and not pushing yourself continuously to learn new things? I dont think kids will every forget that flash is the primal tool at hand. The majority of animators here won't move from flash. They'll depend on it, animating everything scene after scene in a large single timeline. Then depend on swivel to do a massive convert job. I suppose in that way, i respect where you're coming from. Swivel is absolutely without a shadow of a doubt the best SWF to Movie video converter out there, I must have tried at least 15 different applications and most of them commercial. There's some massive problems with it, and has loads of room for a v1.1 but the quality conversion is superior.

So they won't forget it because it's always going to be the first tool everyone suggests here. It's a shame, because realistically animation is much bigger than just flash and although I agree it's not about the canvas, but the story that you tell on it. The SWF doesn't let me tell my story. It lets me tell bits of my story, with a frame, detail and audio limitations. The history of this website might be flash. But the history of animation goes way back before then, and that's something people of newgrounds should embrace.